Exacerbated inflammation, but does not alter atherosclerosis.Author ContributionsConceived and designed the experiments: SNV KEB. Performed the experiments: SNV FK SB. Analyzed the data: SNV JEK KEB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RMB KIA. Wrote the paper: SNV JEK KEB.
For more than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Eastern European countries struggled with social and political instability. Consider Bulgaria, a country that changed its entire political system in 1989. The term AM152 chemical information Anomie was used to describe the state of BMS-986020 molecular weight society in Bulgaria that emerged after the economy had collapsed and the political system struggled to respond [1, 2]. Anomie has also been used to describe the state of society in countries undergoing massive structural change (e.g., Iran, see [3, 4]), countries that face major social or economic crises [5], countries with a long history of war (e.g., Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, see [6, 7]), or societies that face civil unrest (e.g., South Africa, [8]). Anomie has even been used to describe social contexts with relative prosperity, but where income inequality has eroded social capital and trust (e.g., the U.S., [9, 10, 11]), or where rapid economic growth has created instability and unrest (e.g., China, [12]). Despite the fact that anomie is a common experience that many people and societies in the world today share, to date there is no uniform conceptualization and operationalization of this construct. In this paper, we first review the previous conceptualizations and operationalizations of anomie and highlight their shortcomings. Starting from an operationalization of anomie as a perception of the state of society, we develop a scale that disentangles anomie as a state of society from its outcomes at the individual level. In this way, we equip the field with a tool that can be used to develop better insights into the nature of anomie and the experience of those who live in a state of anomie.Anomie: The Concept and its MeasurementEven though anomie has been conceptualized in different ways, perhaps the most well-known approach is to define anomie as a state of society [9?1, 13]. Durkheim [13] proposed that anomie involves the breakdown of social regulation and the rise of moral disruption. Merton [9, 10] extended this thinking and proposed that anomie emerges from the discrepancy between the cultural aspirations of people within a society and the legitimate means available to those people to achieve them. Still focusing on the state of society, Messner and Rosenfeld [11] took a slightly different approach to Merton and focused instead on anomie as a cultural obsession with economic success, manifesting itself as a set of cultural values associated with individualism, achievement orientation, and fetishism of money. Departing somewhat from this well-known work, some have defined anomie as a state of mind. Scholars in this tradition have focused on anomie as an individual’s sense of self-toother alienation or distance [14], or as a set of beliefs, feelings and attitudes in the individual’s mind [15, 16]. In general, these approaches to anomie revolve around a psychological state that can be characterized as a tendency to be self-interested [17], to reject social norms [18, 19], or to feel estranged or isolated from society [14, 20, 21]. In this conceptualization, anomie may also include a sense that life is meaningless [21, 22], where feelings of purposelessness or powerlessness dominate (f.Exacerbated inflammation, but does not alter atherosclerosis.Author ContributionsConceived and designed the experiments: SNV KEB. Performed the experiments: SNV FK SB. Analyzed the data: SNV JEK KEB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RMB KIA. Wrote the paper: SNV JEK KEB.
For more than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Eastern European countries struggled with social and political instability. Consider Bulgaria, a country that changed its entire political system in 1989. The term anomie was used to describe the state of society in Bulgaria that emerged after the economy had collapsed and the political system struggled to respond [1, 2]. Anomie has also been used to describe the state of society in countries undergoing massive structural change (e.g., Iran, see [3, 4]), countries that face major social or economic crises [5], countries with a long history of war (e.g., Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, see [6, 7]), or societies that face civil unrest (e.g., South Africa, [8]). Anomie has even been used to describe social contexts with relative prosperity, but where income inequality has eroded social capital and trust (e.g., the U.S., [9, 10, 11]), or where rapid economic growth has created instability and unrest (e.g., China, [12]). Despite the fact that anomie is a common experience that many people and societies in the world today share, to date there is no uniform conceptualization and operationalization of this construct. In this paper, we first review the previous conceptualizations and operationalizations of anomie and highlight their shortcomings. Starting from an operationalization of anomie as a perception of the state of society, we develop a scale that disentangles anomie as a state of society from its outcomes at the individual level. In this way, we equip the field with a tool that can be used to develop better insights into the nature of anomie and the experience of those who live in a state of anomie.Anomie: The Concept and its MeasurementEven though anomie has been conceptualized in different ways, perhaps the most well-known approach is to define anomie as a state of society [9?1, 13]. Durkheim [13] proposed that anomie involves the breakdown of social regulation and the rise of moral disruption. Merton [9, 10] extended this thinking and proposed that anomie emerges from the discrepancy between the cultural aspirations of people within a society and the legitimate means available to those people to achieve them. Still focusing on the state of society, Messner and Rosenfeld [11] took a slightly different approach to Merton and focused instead on anomie as a cultural obsession with economic success, manifesting itself as a set of cultural values associated with individualism, achievement orientation, and fetishism of money. Departing somewhat from this well-known work, some have defined anomie as a state of mind. Scholars in this tradition have focused on anomie as an individual’s sense of self-toother alienation or distance [14], or as a set of beliefs, feelings and attitudes in the individual’s mind [15, 16]. In general, these approaches to anomie revolve around a psychological state that can be characterized as a tendency to be self-interested [17], to reject social norms [18, 19], or to feel estranged or isolated from society [14, 20, 21]. In this conceptualization, anomie may also include a sense that life is meaningless [21, 22], where feelings of purposelessness or powerlessness dominate (f.
